A woman surnamed Shen, 39, met her "boyfriend" on an online dating website, but later found that the man was working for a pyramid scheme, The Mirror reported.

Shen met a man from Fengtai district, surnamed Fu, 42, on jiayuan.com. In August, Fu asked Shen to meet in Gu'an, Hebei Province, and asked her to invest in a "national project" together. Shen "invested" 69,800 yuan ($10,987). But later she found that Fu and other "investors" of the project were also "dating" more people they met online and were trying to convince them to join the project, too.

A pamphlet of the "company" provided by Shen to investigators says that a quick way to scam more people is through well-known dating websites.

Shen reported her case to the Hebei police.